Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, the British Government’s minister for faith and communities, will give the second Benedict XVI Lecture in London on December 2, focusing on the topic of freedom of religion in the public and private sphere.Last week Lady Warsi said in a speech at Georgetown University in Washington DC that she fears Christians face becoming “extinct” in large parts of the world and called for a “cross-faith, cross-continent” response to the problem of persecution.

My analysis of data from the Pew Research Center -- presented previously in Vienna at the Austrian Diplomatic Academy and this coming week in Geneva at the Human Rights Council and in London at the British Parliament -- provides some evidence that religious minorities in the Middle East and North Africa do indeed face abuse in a larger share of countries than in other world regions.

This includes Christians as well as other minorities such as minority Shia Muslims in Sunni-majority Egypt. In fact, Muslims face harassment in a large majority of the region's countries.

These findings are based on an analysis of three questions of the 33 coded annually by the Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project (see chart at left).

Furthermore, at the onset of the Arab Spring in late 2010 and early 2011, many world leaders, including U.S. President Barack Obama, expressed hope that the political uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa would lead to greater freedoms for the people of the region, including fewer restrictions on religious beliefs and practices. But a new study by the Pew Research Center finds that the region’s already high overall level of restrictions on religion – whether resulting from government policies or from social hostilities – continued to increase in 2011.

Religion impacts the political, social and individual lives of almost everyone, according to a series of major cross-national studies carried out under the Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures Project at the Pew Research Center.

Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford Univ.

The overwhelming majority people today (84%) self-identify as being affiliated with one religion or another, and even among people who are religiously unaffiliated, many have some religious beliefs or engage in some religious practices. The prospects for continued growth of religious populations appear strong as they are younger on average than the world’s religiously unaffiliated population. Some religions have much younger populations, on average, than others. In part, the age differences reflect the geographic distribution of religious groups. Those with a large share of adherents in fast-growing, developing countries tend to have younger populations. Those concentrated in China and in advanced industrial countries, where population growth is slower, tend to be older.

Pew Research Center, 2013

The median age of two major groups – Muslims (23 years) and Hindus (26) – is younger than the median age of the world’s overall population (28). Christians have a median age of 30, slightly higher than the global median, followed by members of other religions (32), adherents of folk or traditional religions (33), the religiously unaffiliated (34) and Buddhists (34). Jews have the highest median age (36), more than a dozen years older than the youngest group, Muslims.As people migrate around the globe, they take their religious beliefs with them, but as they do, they also may face new forms of government restrictions and social hostilities. In fact, Pew Research shows that government restrictions on religion and social hostilities involving religion have been rising in most regions of the world, impacting both existing and newer religions. While causes of the increase are numerous and multidimensional, data reveal a clear and strong association between government restrictions and social hostilities – as one rises, so does the other.

Moreover, Pew Research studies show that religion continues to shape the attitudes, actions and beliefs of people, particularly in non-Western countries. While these studies have revealed much about the impact of religion on politics, societies and people today, much more still needs to be learned. On Friday, Nov. 22, I'll be speaking about "Global Religious Futures: Social and demographic trends we know and what we yet need to know" at Oxford University's Blavatnik School of Government.For a further discussion of restrictions on religious freedom, see my recent TEDx Talk.

After last week's negotiations in Geneva over the future of Iran's nuclear program ended without agreement, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has sought to reassure allies in the region that negotiations would not put their security at risk (NY Times).

Pew Research Center

Amid renewed attention to Iran, here are three things to know about religion in the Islamic Republic.

1. By far, Iran has the largest population of Shia Muslims of any country

Most Shia Muslims (between 68% and 80%) live in four countries: Iran, Pakistan, India and Iraq, according to a Pew Research study. Of these countries, Iran has the largest Shia population 66 million to 70 million Shias, or 37-40% of the world’s total Shia population. Iraq, India and Pakistan each are home to at least 16 million Shias.

Iran is one of only four countries – Iran, Azerbaijan, Bahrain and Iraq – where Shia Muslims make up a majority of the total population.

Sizeable numbers of Shias (1 million or more) are found in Turkey, Yemen, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Nigeria and Tanzania. Shias constitute a relatively small percentage of the Muslim population elsewhere in the world. About 300,000 Shias are estimated to be living in North America, including both the U.S. and Canada, constituting about 10% of North America’s Muslim population.

2. Iran consistently ranks as one of the most religiously restrictive countries worldwide

Studies by the Pew Research Center consistently find that government restrictions on religion in Iran are among the world's highest. The State Department's annual report on international religious freedom summarizes these high restrictions:

The constitution and other laws and policies do not protect religious freedom, and in practice, the government severely restricted religious freedom.

The constitution declares the “official religion is Islam and the doctrine followed is that of Ja’afari (Twelver) Shiism.” The constitution states all laws and regulations must be based on undefined “Islamic criteria” and official interpretation of Sharia (Islamic law).

There were increased reports of the government charging religious and ethnic minorities with moharebeh (enmity against God), “anti-Islamic propaganda,” or vague national security crimes for their religious activities.

There continued to be reports of the government imprisoning, harassing, intimidating, and discriminating against people because of their religious beliefs.

The government imposed legal restrictions on proselytizing and regularly arrests members of the Zoroastrian and Christian communities for practicing their religion.

The government regularly vilified Judaism.

The government considers Bahais to be apostates and defines the Bahai Faith as a “political sect.” The government prohibits Bahais from teaching and practicing their faith and subjects them to many forms of discrimination not faced by members of other religious groups.

Government rhetoric and actions created a threatening atmosphere for nearly all non-Shia religious groups, most notably for Bahais, as well as for Sufi Muslims, evangelical Christians, Jews, and Shia groups not sharing the government’s official religious views.

3. Shia Muslims in Iran see themselves much freer than Sunni Muslims in Iran

Given the privileged status of Shia Islam in Iran, it is not surprising that Shia Muslims consider themselves to be freer to practice their religion than others in the country. Pew Research Center polls conducted in 2011-2012 find that Shia Muslims are twice as likely as Sunnis to feel that they are very free religiously (88% vs. 44%).

In four of the five countries where substantial numbers of Shias and Sunnis were surveyed, most Muslims say they are very free to practice their faith. But only about half (48%) of all Muslims in Iraq – including 58% of Iraqi Shias and 42% of Iraqi Sunnis – describe themselves as very free to practice their religion.

Perhaps not surprisingly, in the other two countries surveyed where Shias are clearly in the majority – Iraq and Azerbaijan – Shias are much more likely than Sunnis to say they are very free to practice their faith.

For more analysis of global restrictions on religious freedom, see my recent TEDx Talk.

Pew Research finds that Egypt has the world's highest level of government restrictions on religion.

(AP Photo/Eman Helal)

Supporters of Egypt's ousted President Mohammed Morsi hold a poster of him with Arabic that reads, "yes to legitimacy, Morsi is my president," during a protest a day before the trial of the former president taking place at a police academy in an eastern Cairo district, in Egypt, Sunday, Nov. 3, 2013.

Morsi has been held in undisclosed destination since his ouster on July 3. He stands accused of incitement to murder.

A recent Pew Research Center analysis finds that government restrictions on religion in Egypt in 2011 included the use of force against religious groups; failure to prevent religious discrimination; favoritism of Islam over other religions; prohibitions on Muslims converting from Islam to other religions; stigmatization of some religious groups as dangerous sects or cults; and restrictions on religious literature or broadcasting. Not only were each of these government restrictions present in Egypt, but the intensity of each of these restrictions was higher than in other countries.

Those actions earn Egypt an overall score of 8.9 out of 10 on the Government Restrictions Index — a scale developed by Pew Research to gauge government restrictions on religion in nearly 200 countries and territories over time. That’s much higher than Middle Eastern-North African countries as a whole, where the median index score (including Egypt’s) is 5.9.

Pew Research public opinion polling conducted in Egypt shows that many Egyptian Muslims recognize the lack of religious freedom in their society. When asked whether they are very free, somewhat free, not too free or not at all free to practice their religion, fewer than half of Egyptian Muslims (46%) answer “very free.” Fewer still think non-Muslims in Egypt are very free to practice their faith (31%). By contrast, a median of 78% of Muslims across the 39 countries polled in Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia, say they are very free to practice their religion, and 73% say non-Muslims in their country are free to practice their faith.

In a separate analysis, the Weekly Number noted that Egypt was one of two countries where Muslims expressed in lowest numbers that others were very free to practice their faith: Egypt (31%) and Uzbekistan (26%).

Overall, about one-in-five Muslims in Egypt (18%) describe non-Muslims as not too free or not at all free to practice their religion, according to a Pew Research analysis. However, Egyptian Muslims are not necessarily troubled by this perceived lack of religious freedom: Two-thirds of those who say non-Muslims in Egypt are not too free or not all free to practice their faith say this is a good thing.

Like many Muslim publics surveyed around the world, a majority of Egyptian Muslims (74%) want sharia, or Islamic law, enshrined as the official law of the land. However, Egypt is one of the few countries where a clear majority (74%) of sharia supporters say both Muslims and non-Muslims in their country should be subject to Islamic law. Worldwide, a median of 39% of Muslims who favor enshrining Islamic law say sharia should apply to Muslims and non-Muslims alike, according to Pew Research analysis.

Egyptian Muslims also back criminalizing apostasy, or leaving Islam for another religion, according to Pew Research analysis. An overwhelming majority of Egyptian Muslims (88%), say converting away from Islam should be punishable by death. Among the 37 countries where the question was asked, a median of 28% of Muslims say apostates should be subject to the death penalty.